The Russian Defense Ministry has hit out at UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson for claiming Russia could kill “thousands and thousands” of Brits, accusing him of having “lost his grasp on reason” and playing on Russophobia.

Conservative Williamson, who took his post less than three month ago, gave a scaremongering interview on the Russian threat to the Telegraph newspaper earlier on Friday.

In particular, Williamson accused Moscow of hatching plans to cripple UK infrastructure, including power lines and under-sea cables that provide energy to some three million homes. “Why would they keep photographing and looking at power stations, why are they looking at the interconnectors that bring so much electricity and so much energy into our country?” Williamson wondered.

The comments did not go unnoticed by Moscow. The claim was harshly refuted by Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov who said the UK defense chief “has lost his grasp on reason in his fiery fight for a defense budget increase.”

According to Williamson, Russia’s malicious tactics go further than just damaging the British economy and ripping apart its infrastructure. They actually include causing “thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths.”

“The minister’s phobia about Russia photographing power stations or studying the interconnectors for British gas pipelines is worthy of being included in children’s comic books or in Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV series,” Konashenkov hit back.

The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman suggested Williamson made the comments merely to raise his own profile. However, if Britain’s top military leaders are reporting such nonsense to the defense secretary, perhaps he should be thinking less about protecting his department’s budget and more about the mental health of his staff, Konashenkov suggested.

Also responding to the comments, the Russian Embassy in London tweeted a screenshot of the Telegraph’s story, adding: “Some British politicians bear no responsibility for their words.”

Speaking to RT, the embassy said the British public want relations between the two countries to be normalized and an end to the “aggressive rhetoric of military and political circles who keep frightening their citizens to get another extra billion pounds from the government budget.”

Williamson, who is tipped as the next potential Conservative Party leader, made his menacing comments after it was announced the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) will embark on a new review of the UK’s military needs. The review, which comes after MPs on both side of the Commons threatened to rebel over military cuts, is scheduled to be completed by summer 2018.